Politics on the islands can be a bloodsport, but we never shy from the ballot box

Last Friday I sat in the garden, read through my postal vote pack, signed in the box and then filled out that ballot. My top three votes went to, in my judgment, the ablest of the ten candidates chasing a seat in the four-member ward of stornoway North.

the others I ranked as best I could. Minutes later, I dropped my dues to democracy in the nearest pillar box and gave it a gentle pat.

I prefer, when possible, voting in person on the day. I like the cheesiness of such things as the squat ballot boxes and the stub of pencil on its string. the pleasant people outside with their rosettes and assorted a-boards in party colours.

I also believe firmly in voting within an election’s own terms. today is a local government election. It should not be about Partygate, saving the Union or giving Boris Johnson a kicking.

Politicians who exhort us to treat today’s ballot as a national opinion poll do civic life no favours.

Local elections are not about Brexit, independence or sending a message. they are about schools and libraries and social work, bins and weeds and potholes. they are, too, a judgment on the candidates and their campaigns.

I cast my top three votes for men who had actually called at my house to solicit my support and also had original ideas. When I left Lewis last thursday, six of the ten hopefuls – with a week to go – had not even bothered to drop me a leaflet. those included the only two women standing.

there was much fuss after our 2017 vote in the Western Isles because not a single female councillor was elected. In fact, very few had stood.

Recent decades have seen many extremely able women play a big part in Outer Hebridean life.

ONE thinks at once of the likes of anne Urquhart, Mairi Bremner, Kathleen Macaskill, annie Macsween and Morag Munro. there was nothing vague or coy about any of them. By contrast, and to judge by their pitches in the local paper, one woman thought I should vote for her because she would bring a ‘fresh perspective’ – what this would be, she did not detail. another told us twice she was kind to animals.

Certainly one does not want the local chambers packed out with the sort of folk who bite the heads off bats, but I really want rather more to go on than fluffy little kittens.

By contrast, the splendid Catriona Murray has been kicking up the campaign trail dust in the adjacent, beachy ward of Loch a tuath – with a BBC alba camera crew in tow – as well as holding down her day job at the local college, chairing the stornoway trust, writing a highly regarded blog and all with a lovely line in selfmocking humour.

We take elections in the Western Isles seriously because, until 1974, we had no local authority at all – save stornoway town Council and some toothless district committees. We were torn asunder between the county councils of Inverness, and Ross and Cromarty.

We have come a long way since, but our elections still see often thumpingly high turnouts. at a shawbost byelection about 1998, for instance, nearly 90 per cent of locals went to the polls. that was a sad milestone because the election had been forced by the disgrace of one Donald MacLeod, ‘Domhnall Easy’, a popular local mechanic but apt to get into scrapes.

still, he was an extremely able man and a first-class pork barrel politician, whose tenure brought signal improvements to the main highway through shawbost and Bragar, a much better water supply and a shiny new school.

When eager foes meanly in 1993 made public his juvenile terms in prison, he simply held a press conference, handled the nastiest questions with smiley patience and memorably declared ‘every saint has a past and every sinner has a future’. His 2001 funeral was one of the biggest on the West side in years.

Invariably, at a local election in the Western Isles, there are several uncontested seats. Being an incumbent is an advantage and it is thought almost rude to stand against someone if they are doing a respectable job. sometimes this has been taken to extremes – such as one by-election, in the 1990s, when at close of nominations no candidate had been entered into the lists.

Bashful and retiring were not words that could ever have been used about perhaps our brashest island politician, the late angus Graham. Born in the states – like a surprising number of mid-century Lewis children – his parents came home and the scared little boy found himself in a windswept island playground speaking only american.

Within six months he had achieved entire fluency in Gaelic. But he never lost scrappy instincts that owed something to Chicago.

ANGUs Graham won Gress in a 1983 byelection, never hid his blood-red Labour sympathies (though he always stood as an independent) and kept tight grip of his seat by the simple expedient of visiting the post office every thursday to charm the pensioners.

He had an ear for the sound bite and a weakness for the excoriating press release. He once slammed new council houses so draughty that one constituent, he declaimed, was ‘kept floating like ali Baba on a magic carpet’.

But his service as viceconvener from 1995 to 1999 saw such achievements that many still think it the most productive in Comhairle history.

It was at the 1999 election that he had his one serious fright, when a good but churchy opponent roused Free Church adherents by the legion.

By 5pm on polling day, angus Graham realised he was losing. He kept his head, rattled round the ward, drove his doting grannies by the dozen to the polls – and held on.

He was sharp, irascible, abrasive but once he had his teeth in an issue he would never let go. Even when you were excoriated in his latest incandescent statement you could not but respect his iron integrity.

there have been occasional low moments, like the BCCI humiliation in 1991 – though almost all the money was subsequently recovered.

there was also a depressing afternoon when councillors voted through a loan agreement, involving hefty interest rates and hundreds of thousands of pounds, more or less on the nod. then an hour was spent debating whether to shell out £45 on hats for stornoway’s two traffic wardens.

Yet there is occasional dark hilarity. some years ago my own councillor forced an open ‘roll call’ vote on election to a key post – there were but two candidates – when not a few colleagues would have preferred a secret ballot.

‘Oh, Gordon, what have you done?’ wailed one of them. ‘Now it’s an open vote – and I’ve promised both of them.’